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Google should ignore the ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling that has allowed thousands of people to cover up their past, peers claim.

The Internet giant should not co-operate with the European Court of Justice ruling, which is ‘unreasonable’ and ‘unworkable’, the Lords committee said.

Paedophiles, doctors and politicians are among more than 90,000 people who have demanded to have their pasts erased since May.

But Baroness Prashar, who co-wrote the report, said: ‘We do not believe that individuals should have a right to have links to accurate and lawfully available information about them removed, simply because they do not like what is said.

‘We also believe that it’s wrong in principle to leave search engines themselves the task of deciding whether to delete information or not, based on vague, ambiguous and unhelpful criteria.’

Google has agreed to more than half the requests to delete information but complained that it has to act as ‘judge and jury’.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, said the ruling was a ‘very dangerous path to go down’.